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“Yourfavoritekahya, these days. I was your favorite once.” Tadek’s expression darkened, grew more wretched.
“I don’t have a favorite. Eozena would be my favorite, if I were to have one. Evemer and I aren’t friends.” Not yet. But it was getting easier, every day, to be around him. Easier to turn to him when Kadou wanted input or a second opinion on something. Easier, too, to trust him, and to feel like he was being trusted in return—in fact, that particular part hadn’t been difficult at all since the day in the garden, when Evemer had proved himself so conclusively. Even so, Kadou still felt moments of overwhelming, cringing embarrassment when he misspoke in front of Evemer, and he still had a sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind, whispering in the same voice as his terrors, that Evemer was only being kind, that Evemer secretly didn’t like him at all and was only finding graceful, political ways to dance around the fact.
“Right,” Tadek said. “So it was never me at all.” He shook his head, his mouth a tight line. “After Siranos, that’s when it started going wrong?”
“No,” Kadou said in a small voice. “It was before that. I just . . .” He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“If you were sorry, you’d explain. Have I offended you? Have I hurt you somehow?”
“No. It’s just—people shouldn’t beused! They’re people!You’repeople! You don’t deserve that—you’re not a thing.” Kadou sighed and pressed the heels of his shaking palms to his eyes. “I pushed you away because I thought I was going to hurt you, but that just made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. I should have been honest with you.”
“Why did you think you were going to hurt me?” Tadek demanded. “Do you think I don’t know my own mind?”
“I don’t think I always knowmymind,” Kadou said.
“Well,that’sperfectly obvious. You’ll dither and wring your hands all night until someone convinces you that you have permission to want something. Melek has to coax you just to let çem file your nails!”
Kadou dropped his hands into his lap with a grimace. Evemer hadn’t had to coax about washing his hair in the bathhouse. But that was different too—Evemer needed to do things like that so he’d know he was useful and valued. “I’m not in a position where I feel like I can ask for anything I want just because I want it.” He swallowed around the lump that had come into his throat. His eyes stung. “I thought—” What had he thought of it? They weren’t lovers—that implied that there had been something more between them. They weren’t equals, either. They could never be equals, no matter how much they had pantomimed it in private with each other, no matter how much Tadek was the closest thing he’d ever had to a friend. The gap between them was even wider now that Tadek was his armsman instead of a kahya. “A little while ago,” he said quietly, looking down at his hands in his lap. He was wringing them, just like Tadek had said. He made himself stop. “A little while ago, Eozena reminded me of my position. I shouldn’t have accepted your offer, even last year. And then you were my armsman, and everything was different, and I thought you—”
“What? What did you think?”
“I thought you’d want more from me. I thought you’d want to be . . . you know. Intimate. Emotionally.”
Tadek barked a harsh laugh. “Me? Haveemotions? Perish the thought. I try to avoid them whenever possible, except when they ambush me without my consent.”
“You were being . . . affectionate in front of the others.” Kadou glanced up at him. “You were making offers more openly.”
“They all knew already,” Tadek said, incredulous. “Were we going to bother to pretend we were chaste with each other just for propriety, in front of yourkahyalar,of all people? The ones who know everything about you? I’d bet a hundred altinlar that even Melek and Evemer could map every freckle on your body, and that’swithouthaving ever slept with you. It’s their—our—job to know everything about you, to see you at your worst, and love you anyway.” Kadou opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Tadek made a sharp, cutting gesture with one had. “Don’t. Don’t you dare say it. You were going to say something about all the reasons we shouldn’t love you or that we don’tneedto go out of our way, is that right? Fuck that. Or was it how you shouldn’t need anyone to look after you?” Tadek said viciously. “You shouldn’t have needs or wants, because then you’d be inconveniencing someone else, is that it? Or was it how you shouldn’t even be a person with preferences, let alone with desires? No wonder you get along so well with Evemer. You must find him justfascinating.”
“I wouldn’t say that I do.” But he did, didn’t he? That was part of it—he didn’t want Evemer to think badly of him, and as the days and weeks passed, part of him still wondered with no small amount of yearning how Evemer managed tobethe way he was, so steady and grounded, seeming so sure of himself even when he said he felt lost.
“No? You, who never wants to admit that you want anything, and him, who might as well be made of stone? You’re saying you don’t wish you could be like him?”
Kadou bit his lip—he was too obvious with it, then. Another way in which he wasn’t at all like Evemer. You couldn’t tell what Evemer was feeling unless you were looking straight at him and watching for it.
“Tell you what,” Tadek continued, “if I was buried alive in a box with one other person, I’d want it to be him—I think he’s found a way not to evenbreathe,just in case you might want to make use of the air.”
Kadou stared at him. “Are youjealousof him? There’s no need. He hasn’t replaced you.”
“Of course he hasn’t.” Tadek snorted. “He wouldn’t offer to sleep with you, and you obviously wouldn’t ever ask him. How can I be replaced, when the two of you would only ever manage to sit quietly on opposite ends of the couch like spinsters?”
The ball of tangled and terrifying emotion in the pit of his stomach kindled suddenly into anger. “Would you stop? Please?”
“Oh, right, of course,” Tadek laughed. “You don’t like me talking about him like that.”
“I don’t like you talking aboutyoulike that!” Kadou said fiercely. “Your duty is to care for me—I accept that. I’m doing the best I can to look after you too, but how can I when you’re so convinced that the only thing I value about you is the fact that you’re willing to sleep with me?” He glared at Tadek, though he was now shaking like a leaf—hard enough that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep his feet if he’d been standing. His voice shook too, the words catching and snagging in his throat like silk veils on thorns. “If you think that’s all you have to offer me, and if I can’t accept that offer anymore, then of course you’re going to be hurt! Of course you’re going to think that I’ve cast you aside! You can be as angry with me as you like, you can be jealous and hurt, but stop talking about yourself like you’re nothing!” He covered his face with his hands again, wishing andwishingthat he could allow himself to cry, just to drain out some of this enormous emotion. “You’ve been doing that the whole time—talking about yourself like you think you’re not important to me. I thought you were just flattering me, or flirting, but that’s not it, is it? That’s why you kept making those jokes about a kiss being a great gift, right? Like it was something I wasgivingyou instead of something we were doingtogether.”
Tadek said nothing.
Kadou lowered his hands, but couldn’t bring himself to look at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. He swallowed hard, eyes closed, clasping his hands so tight in his lap that his knuckles ached and his nails dug into his skin. “I should have . . . noticed. Or something.”
“There is no need for Your Highness to apologize,” Tadek said. He sounded even more like Evemer now, stiff and emotionless.
Kadou opened his eyes and glared at him. “Stop it.”
Tadek huffed a breath. “Thank you, I accept your apology,” he said, still without inflection. “Happy?”
“No, of course not.”
